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> This isnʼt the typical narrative we hear about new discoveries and technologies. We tend to think of them emerging as soon as they’re technically possible. I

> This isnʼt the typical narrative we hear about new discoveries and technologies. We tend to think of them emerging as soon as they’re technically possible. I don't know where this narrative comes from, but it can't really come from anybody who specializes in making brand new technologies. There are soooooo many amazing technologies that have never been brought to market because of the roadblocks like this vaccine encountered. It's even amazing that mRNA vaccines actually made it to the market, and if it hadn't been for the pandemic, there's a good chance that it would be another 15 years before they do, and this mRNA vaccination tech has been brewing since the 90s, I think? Years before the pandemic, I knew of Moderna and BioNTech because they had the capability to make customized therapeutic vaccines to train a person's immune system to fight their particular cancer's unique neoantigens. The hurdles seemed somewhat enormous even then for them. Without the kick start of money and trials that the pandemic provided, it would have taken so many more years to do the discovery needed. The problem is that we have a massive unexplored terrain in R&D and trivial amounts of funds compared to the area we can explore. We have to be extremely picky about what gets money to move forward. This is a social problem, as much as a finance problem, we simply use dollars to express our societal wishes of what we want to encourage. In the mean time, it would be good if the media would stop spreading the idea that if you build a better mouse trap, the word will bear a path to your door. It's quite the opposite.

htss2013 3y ago
>It's even amazing that mRNA vaccines actually made it to the market, and if it hadn't been for the pandemic, there's a good chance that it would be another 15 years before they do, and this mRNA vaccination tech has been brewing since the 90s, I think? Have they made it to market? It's been like 4 years and there are no other ones to be found outside of trials. This is kind of strange because we were told this is so much easier, safer and faster than other technologies. If the US wasn't accepting for whatever weird reason, then you'd think they'd pop up in lots of other countries. But doesn't seem like that is happening.
- epistasis 3y ago
  This is the pace of typical development these days, outside of pandemic rushes. And four years ago was pre-pandemic, it's only been a couple years of pushing on other targets. mRNA vaccine tech is one of the biggest advances in biotech in a long time, the other apparatus has not necessarily caught up.
  - htss2013 3y ago
    They've been targeting other things with mrna vaccines since way before the pandemic. For example: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31079849/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31079849/ (2019) https://jitc.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40425-015-0068-y https://jitc.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40425-015-0... (2015)
scarface_74 3y ago
> It's even amazing that mRNA vaccines actually made it to the market, and if it hadn't been for the pandemic, there's a good chance that it would be another 15 years before they do, and this mRNA vaccination tech has been brewing since the 90s, I think? I’m by no means an anti-vaxxer and believe that even if the “vaccines” did reduce the severity and number of deaths it was a win. But, I think it was a disservice to call something a vaccine that didn’t seem to reduce the chance of you catching it, the effects of the vaccine completely disappeared within 6-9 months and it didn’t keep you from catching Covid. We wouldn’t accept that definition for any of the other vaccines like Smallpox, measles, etc
- Loughla 3y ago
  I think if the vaccine decreased the severity and mortality rates of the disease it targets, we absolutely would call it a win. Flu vaccine. I'm talking about the flu vaccine.
  - scarface_74 3y ago
    I agree and I said as much. I am arguing more about definitions and marketing than anything else that led to skepticism. Besides the looney bins, very few were anti vax about the traditional vaccines we all had to get to attend school. We saw those as effective to prevent the diseases they were meant to. I was first in line when it came to Covid “vaccines” and kept up to date with boosters because I knew even the common cold can trigger my overactive immune system/asthma. I’ve had Covid twice and I was coughing for a couple of weeks. It was more irritating than anything else. I attribute my not having a more severe reaction to the vaccines. It probably wouldn’t have been that bad with the other preventive asthma meds I take now. But the marketing by the government behind the vaccines and the early suppression by the government and the tech industry of information about the long term effectiveness has set us back.
    - sunshinesnacks 3y ago
      Sounds like you are moving the goalposts from “it doesn’t help at all (after 9 months) and isn’t even a vaccine” to “there was poor government marketing and tech industry actions were bad”, which are very different things. I think that downplaying the benefits of the vaccines is somewhere between uninformed and irresponsible. I don’t care nearly as much about criticism of government commas and the tech industry.
OCASMv2 3y ago
> It's even amazing that mRNA vaccines actually made it to the market, and if it hadn't been for the pandemic, there's a good chance that it would be another 15 years before they do, and this mRNA vaccination tech has been brewing since the 90s, I think? Maybe then they would have gone through proper testing before unleashing them onto the world population.
- epistasis 3y ago
  They did go through proper testing. They had been going through lots of testing for years, incrementally, slowly, just like the vaccines in this article. It was only the pandemic that provided the money and urgency to do it sooner rather than later. Please do not let politics bleed into science.
  - OCASMv2 3y ago
    A couple of months of human trials (that started before animal trials were finished) isn't proper testing. Each mRNA vaccine (like any other type of vaccine) is a standalone product. Testing the general viability of mRNA technology isn't the same as testing a specific mRNA vaccine.
    - epistasis 3y ago
      Says who? Seriously? Some random paper taken out of context and copied onto lists that anti-backers uncritically copy and paste? And animal trials? That's not going to tell you much of anything about human safety! In any case, if it was a gamble, the gamble paid off, because deployment has proven to be incredibly safe. The only vaccine that has safety questions was the more traditional vaccine from Johnson and Johnson, and they are very very rare, if they exist. All this data is out there, anybody who has safety concerns has not bothered to educate themselves, think critically, and examine the data. We all have different risk tolerances, but along any possible health metric, not being vaccinated is far less safe than being vaccinated for the people the vaccine is indicated for.
      - 3y ago

htss2013 3y ago

>It's even amazing that mRNA vaccines actually made it to the market, and if it hadn't been for the pandemic, there's a good chance that it would be another 15 years before they do, and this mRNA vaccination tech has been brewing since the 90s, I think? Have they made it to market? It's been like 4 years and there are no other ones to be found outside of trials. This is kind of strange because we were told this is so much easier, safer and faster than other technologies. If the US wasn't accepting for whatever weird reason, then you'd think they'd pop up in lots of other countries. But doesn't seem like that is happening.

epistasis 3y ago
This is the pace of typical development these days, outside of pandemic rushes. And four years ago was pre-pandemic, it's only been a couple years of pushing on other targets. mRNA vaccine tech is one of the biggest advances in biotech in a long time, the other apparatus has not necessarily caught up.
- htss2013 3y ago
  They've been targeting other things with mrna vaccines since way before the pandemic. For example: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31079849/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31079849/ (2019) https://jitc.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40425-015-0068-y https://jitc.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40425-015-0... (2015)

scarface_74 3y ago

> It's even amazing that mRNA vaccines actually made it to the market, and if it hadn't been for the pandemic, there's a good chance that it would be another 15 years before they do, and this mRNA vaccination tech has been brewing since the 90s, I think? I’m by no means an anti-vaxxer and believe that even if the “vaccines” did reduce the severity and number of deaths it was a win. But, I think it was a disservice to call something a vaccine that didn’t seem to reduce the chance of you catching it, the effects of the vaccine completely disappeared within 6-9 months and it didn’t keep you from catching Covid. We wouldn’t accept that definition for any of the other vaccines like Smallpox, measles, etc

Loughla 3y ago
I think if the vaccine decreased the severity and mortality rates of the disease it targets, we absolutely would call it a win. Flu vaccine. I'm talking about the flu vaccine.
- scarface_74 3y ago
  I agree and I said as much. I am arguing more about definitions and marketing than anything else that led to skepticism. Besides the looney bins, very few were anti vax about the traditional vaccines we all had to get to attend school. We saw those as effective to prevent the diseases they were meant to. I was first in line when it came to Covid “vaccines” and kept up to date with boosters because I knew even the common cold can trigger my overactive immune system/asthma. I’ve had Covid twice and I was coughing for a couple of weeks. It was more irritating than anything else. I attribute my not having a more severe reaction to the vaccines. It probably wouldn’t have been that bad with the other preventive asthma meds I take now. But the marketing by the government behind the vaccines and the early suppression by the government and the tech industry of information about the long term effectiveness has set us back.
  - sunshinesnacks 3y ago
    Sounds like you are moving the goalposts from “it doesn’t help at all (after 9 months) and isn’t even a vaccine” to “there was poor government marketing and tech industry actions were bad”, which are very different things. I think that downplaying the benefits of the vaccines is somewhere between uninformed and irresponsible. I don’t care nearly as much about criticism of government commas and the tech industry.

OCASMv2 3y ago

> It's even amazing that mRNA vaccines actually made it to the market, and if it hadn't been for the pandemic, there's a good chance that it would be another 15 years before they do, and this mRNA vaccination tech has been brewing since the 90s, I think? Maybe then they would have gone through proper testing before unleashing them onto the world population.

epistasis 3y ago
They did go through proper testing. They had been going through lots of testing for years, incrementally, slowly, just like the vaccines in this article. It was only the pandemic that provided the money and urgency to do it sooner rather than later. Please do not let politics bleed into science.
- OCASMv2 3y ago
  A couple of months of human trials (that started before animal trials were finished) isn't proper testing. Each mRNA vaccine (like any other type of vaccine) is a standalone product. Testing the general viability of mRNA technology isn't the same as testing a specific mRNA vaccine.
  - epistasis 3y ago
    Says who? Seriously? Some random paper taken out of context and copied onto lists that anti-backers uncritically copy and paste? And animal trials? That's not going to tell you much of anything about human safety! In any case, if it was a gamble, the gamble paid off, because deployment has proven to be incredibly safe. The only vaccine that has safety questions was the more traditional vaccine from Johnson and Johnson, and they are very very rare, if they exist. All this data is out there, anybody who has safety concerns has not bothered to educate themselves, think critically, and examine the data. We all have different risk tolerances, but along any possible health metric, not being vaccinated is far less safe than being vaccinated for the people the vaccine is indicated for.
    - 3y ago